


X.

by bexacaust



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: For all my spiteI might never win the fightBut I will rage against the light forever more





	X.

_He exhales smoke like thunderheads; one of a number of conductors for those long black trains that lead down to eternity._

_Out of the collective, he is the most skilled in the art._

He knows betrayal, he knows it intimately well- the madame he’s lain with more often than not, the prettyboy with dark eyes that smiles from a stage he has grown accustomed to.

Of the dark and to the dark he returns- from a tunnel rich in ore to tunnel-vision focused on a blazing X like the endpoint on a moonshiner’s map; guiding him to glory and something like closure.

His preacher and pastor long since gone, a collar discarded and they now side with a devil Impactor once knew, once maybe loved or something like it. He remembers poetry like camellia petals- words falling around like the scatter after a wake held in memory of a memory of a mech, the self long since forgotten.

But not by him, not by a Wrecker with a hand like the crook of a shepherd and a temper like the avenging archangels.

His congregation looks to him in burning battlefields- his inherited parish, his followers of lightning and fury and unchecked battlelust follow him like the most loyal of legions and he wonders lat at night if he lost his faith.

A faith not found in a god, but in mortal creatures who live and die like the rest of the universe.

The prophet who sat across from him in a run down bar on the bad side of town- who told him of utopia and perfection, of equality and diplomacy; only to cast it aside for the title of Warlord, and in some way to cast Impactor himself aside in a kind of absentminded betrayal only read of in the novels nobles hid under their berths to read late at night.

Of love, of loss, of all the things in between.

Impactor scratches another X onto the table.

And he remembers his teacher, his leader- the one to see past the dust and grime of mines and menial labor to the fire burning beneath the smoldering coals and fueling the heavy engine as it rumbled downhill on a track set for desolation.

And this one, too, cast Impactor aside.

Betrayal of the highest- to willingly go from friend to enemy. To stand opposite on the old fields churned by marches and mortars, scarred by fire and hellish heat.

Another X.

And so Impactor was alone. And he was in the shadows, pieces of himself scattered at the crossroads to be brought back to him by aristocratic Praxian hands and a smile like a crescent moon in winter.

He sold his soul to black and white and ambiguity and in return was given a list of names- a list of others, to collect, to keep, to rebuild as he himself had been rebuilt. And his ranks grew, optics made of forgefire and sparks made of caged supernovas and voices ground ragged by battlecries.

Like his, too, had been.

And so, his congregation Became. and it hurts, oh how it hurts to become- he thinks, remembering the feeling of a spark crashing down and down into the dust of being alone. 

He shutters his optics, and he buries the living crystal somewhere deep and dark where no one would dare go; to be sure it would never be taken again, held in gentle hands that grow claws when he looks away.

He exhales black smoke, the forge he has built within himself churns out coal-power and the reek of war and burnt skies and his steps are thunderclaps on the horizon as he stand before his following-

Steel tags on a chain around his neck and tucked under plating like a preacher’s white collar, he speaks with words fueled by the anger of Gods and the plagues of his people.

“WRECKERS, MOVE OUT!”

The smile that blossoms on his face like a funeral wreath is not one of happiness, but a cold viciousness.

And he buries his spark deeper, ever deeper- before he marches off to a war that was far too personal before he saw himself as a person.

* * *

    


End file.
